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Pocket SLorpedo

I’ve been meaning to have another play with SLorpedo since June and have finally had a couple of good chances to get in to Second Life more than 5 minutes at a time for a play. The result is pocket slorpedo:

This version is pocket size because it should be easier for anyone to have a go. Instead of relaying data about the subs via a server somewhere, I’m using a Java TUIO client to send info. directly into second life using XML-RPC. In world, you can scale the game to any size, so no need for an entire sim, although it’s a shame not to have mini versions of Chris’s excellent, but quite massive submarine models. (I’ve cheated and used simple icehouse style sub pieces for now, which my minimalist modeling skills suited nicely! Should be easy to replace them with something decent later though!)

Unlike before, the whole game is run from the real world, with the number ‘4’ used to fire the torpedoes and ‘0’ to start a new game. (All other odd pieces appear as blue subs, even pieces are yellow, under 30 are small subs and over 30 are big subs.) Inside second life, you can replay the last game in case anyone walks in front of a torpedo!

I had wanted to rez each sub as it was played but xml-rpc just seems too unreliable for that at the moment. Simple to switch though if things improve. I have a couple more quirks to iron out, like subs firing even if they’ve been hit! Ooops. Still, they all face the right way and shoot in the right direction. I borrowed a webcam for the night to double check things worked with the real reactivision (the TUIO simulator was great for getting started) and looks like I also need another go at ‘placing’ the pieces- I wanted the sub position to be fixed when the piece was first placed, ignoring any sneaky re-adjustments people might be tempted to make! Worked fine with the simulator but all the positions came out as 0,0 with the real images, so for now you can keep moving pieces around before firing. Darn!